Luis

Hi my name is Luis. I’m a rising junior from Community Health Academy Of the Heights(CHAH). My Starter project was the Light Seeking Micro-bug. I chose the micro-bug because for me it seemed awesome to have a miniature robot that seeks light to process itself around with a power source of 3 volt, 2 triple AAA batteries. My Main project was the Robotic Arm. I chose the Robotic Arm because who would have the enthusiasm to built a Robot Arm. My arm has three potentiometers that control four servos. One potentiometer controls two servos for the base of the Arm the other two potentiometers control two separate servos.

Robotic Arm

In this video I show how all the parts in my arm are important and what they do. First, my arm has a wooden platform for the whole arm and then there are two more platforms to keep the base servos elevated. This is so the Arm wouldn’t hit the surface below it while it moved. Then there are three bases each controlling something. The Two bottom base controls the Arm’s movement. The third base controls the gripper’s turning movement. Then each base have a servo connected to it. The servos are controlled by a potentiometer. Each servos has three wires, the red wire is power, yellow is signal and the black wire is ground. The signal wire are connected to digital pins, 2,4,6,8. The potentiometers signal wire are connected to the analog pins A0, A2 and A4. The ground and power wire are connected into the breadboard + and – input. Finally, my arm was going to be 1 foot long but it was too heavy so I cut it to 7.5 inches. My arm moved only 90 degrees but then I modified the code to make it move in a 180 degree position. In addition, my Gripper can twist in 180 degrees, and it also can grab light thing unless more power is added to it. My robotic arm has lifted a #2 pencil, a 9 volt battery, and some glasses. My hardest struggle was coding my Arduino Uno. I started coding by pseudo coding at first, then I got some start up tutorials from my instructor. I then rewrote Ariel’s code by adding my information to it.

Well I am almost close to success for my robotic arm. As shown in my video, I have finished building my arm and the bases for my robotic arm. First, in the bottom the base have two servos screwed to them. The base helps to keep the servos adjusted and these servos are the ones that will move the arm in a 180 degree movement. To make the arm move I had to screw the servo to the arm. To do this, I drilled both servos and drilled the arm. This allows me to attach the servos together each on opposite side of the aluminum arm by using screws and nuts. At the top of the arm I screwed on an aluminum base for the gripper to connect to the robotic arm. Finally, I tested my mechanical parts and concluded that this was a great step to continue ahead with my project until its completed. I also faced a challenge which was that my arm was to heavy when it was a foot long so we cut it to 7.5 inches long.

In this video I show my second milestone accomplished for building my Robotic Arm. In this video I show how I went from controlling one servo to controlling four servos. Two of the servos control a gripper which would spin 90 degrees and opens and closes. As in the other video connected the signal wires of the servo into pins 2,4,6,7. I then connected two wires from the Arduino 5 volt and the Arduino ground into the power rails of the bread board, I connected the ground wire into the – side of the bread board and the 5 volt wire into the + side of the bread board. The servos are able to move because each potentiometer controls two servos which have different task for making the robotic arm work.

This other code shows how the Arduino works and tells the arduino to do something over and over:

Void Loop
{val = analogRead(potpinA0); // reads the value of the potentiometer (value between 0 and 1023)
valA0 = val*0.5; // divides value in half
constrain(valA0, 0, 1023);
valA0 = map(valA0, 0, 1023, 0, 180); // scale it to use it with the servo (value between 0 and 180)
Serv2.write(valA0); // sets the servo position according to the scaled value
delay(20); // waits for the servo to get there
val = analogRead(potpinA2); // reads the value of the potentiometer (value between 0 and 1023)
valA2 = val*0.5; //divides value in half
constrain(valA2, 0, 1023);
valA2 = map(valA2, 0, 1023, 0, 180); // scale it to use it with the servo (value between 0 and 180)
Serv3.write(valA2); // sets the servo position according to the scaled value
delay(20); // waits for the servo to get there }

In this video I show my first milestone for building my Robotic Arm. One of the steps for completing my milestone was learning how to code. I first learned how to pseudo code. Then I transferred the pseudo code into real code and uploaded it into the software to program my Arduino to control the potentiometer and servos. The purpose of me coding the Arduino was to give the potentiometer the necessary power to control the servo. The arduino got its power from a 9 volt adapter that I created through soldering. My second step was to make my potentiometer control the servos which would make it rotate in 180 degree. My next step would be to make all three my servos move by two potentiometers. One potentiometer would control two servos and the other potentiometer would control the other servo. The two servos are going to be my base and the other servo is going to control my gripper.

Well today I have finished working on my Light-seeking Micro bug which took me a while to put together. My Micro bug consists of resistors, Light dependent resistors, trimmers, transistors, capacitors, LED, and motors. To place all the parts on the board I used a soldering iron controller. I had some difficulties while working on my Micro bug. Some of these difficulties were because I placed some of the parts on backwards. For example, I placed a transistor on the board, opposite than the way it should have been. At one point I got my Micro bug to work but only half of it worked. I didn’t know what was wrong with it until my instructor told me to scrape some of the metal from the board because there was a shortage. I then scraped the metal off until there was nothing covering the metal. My instructor then helped me to solder more wire on the board to fix the shortage between two of the transistors.

During my time at BlueStamp engineering I learn how to work by myself a little better. I got the opportunity to learn many new engineering techniques and I also learned about electrical and mechanical engineering. I feel more motivated about becoming an engineer but with the BlueStamp engineering experience I don’t know what career path I should take within Engineering. I also learn how to ask question when I’m confused. I say this because I am very shy when it comes to experiencing new things, but BlueStamp engineering seemed as a great experience because It help me work on my people skills. I learned how to code an Arduino which allowed me to create my own code and share with the next to be student from BlueStamp engineering. I also worked with potentiometers, Sevos, and ArduinoUno for the first time. My Instructors Akshay and Stephanie helped me out a lot during my time in BlueStamp engineering. I also got some help from Ariel and David’s previous Arm. In addition, I got some tutorials help form my instructor Akshay.